The Zodiac Narrative
by Yeghishe
Summary: Canon Divergence/Alternate Universe. A full cosmic cycle of healing and reincarnation: a narrative of restoration and romance in four parts. A poem turned prose turned poem again. [4/4]
1. Aries — Taurus — Gemini

**.**

**Part **

**[ I ]**

* * *

_you came as the warrior_

_released-returned in a time of peace_

_to a unfamiliar countryside _

_realizing that the battles were fought_

_for people and places _

_that have become foreign_

* * *

**Aries**

**[March 21 - April 20]**

**Mars**

* * *

His flat starts out bare and empty, three echoing rooms, the bright chips in the mosaic tiles that decorate the floor the only color in the place.

He sleeps on a pallet like a prisoner, more exhausted when he awakes than when he lay down. It may have been almost two years, the first spent in a coma, the second wandering, but his eyes are still ringed in darkness.

The nights are like tunnels that he passes through, stars spinning back the night until the dawn is unveiled. There is a week of sickly dawns before the sun shines gold again.

The first month is all darkness and half-formed visions. He anticipates enemies around every corner with foreboding that compresses his soul.

He presses through because he must, because he lived against all odds and he cannot squander this gift as he did the first forty years of life. And yet he worries the bone of the future into slivers of the past.

During the night he stares out of the window at the halos of golden light, night-dark path alley-ways. He is near enough to the harbor to hear the symphony of night sounds assembling into their own songs, and near enough to scent the salt of the Mediterranean.

Just when he is certain that this moment in time is as far as he is able to go mentally, physically, emotionally—the currents of his past making the break too hard to withstand, the horizon of happiness looking like a razors edge he can never scale or cross—he begins to see the brightness of grace at the edges of his vision. They flash like stars at the very brink of the darkness.

He had made being an asshole a business—plotting his next move over the desk in his dungeons. Unlearning these patterns is like unmaking himself, but he is determined to tear out every stitch and begin again.

* * *

**Taurus**

**[April 21 - May 21]**

**Venus**

* * *

As the weather warms, his days are full of forgetting: reading poetry, attending mass in Spanish on Sundays, wandering like a shadow through the bazaar, and eating on the edge of the port.

The flat is filling: a plush futon covered with crimson embroidered scarves, a tooled brass lamp with sensuous curves, ancient and modern books that line the walls and stack in the corners, a rug made of bright silk remnants, and a low table for eating at.

He dreams. They are unformed and dark but behind them is healing light shining through like starry-pinpricks.

Memories unfold and float away in the haze of a healing brain.

It has been two years now but _the_ date, May second, is indelibly incised on his soul.

It rains. On his balcony are intricately decorated clay pots lined against the brass railing next to bags of topsoil. He brings out potted dahlias, purple as the onslaught of twilight. He plants them in between the showers of spring rain until the balcony is an oasis of green life.

He is learning to cook; it is surprisingly or unsurprisingly like potions, depending on a person's perspective. When he started he followed the recipes to the letter and weighed all of his ingredients, but slowly he is learning to take risks. His mushrooms are still cut in perfect little squares and he doubts that will ever change.

He has a tagine now. A lovely clay affair, all painted with bright yellow lemons on the warm terra-cotta hued background. He slow-cooks lamb and oranges, or saffron and monkfish, or tender beef and dates under its pyramided lid.

He finds it is better to be kind. Kindness isn't what he thought when he was in school: a synonym for weakness. It doesn't come in the purple of bruised knees, the darkness of a black eye, or the red of a well-aimed hex. He finds it takes courage to be kind, to slow his words, to smile at the shopkeeper or the priest. It takes courage but he perseveres because the world has so much evil already—it is better to be kind.

* * *

**Gemini**

**[May 22 - June 21]**

**Mercury**

* * *

The breeze swirls up off of the Mediterranean, courting the pages of the book that lays open, creamy pages bare to the sun. The dark-haired man does not interrupt its dance; in fact, he does not even notice it. His dark eyes are watching the lovely young woman at the rail of the balcony with appreciation that looks a bit like longing.

In one hand she cradles a glass of pale wine and the long, elegant fingers of the other bear a slender cigarette.

She is vaguely familiar but he is too relaxed to apply himself to attempting recognition.

She turns, acknowledging his gaze with a lift of her glass and a half smile.

He wants to speak to her but lacks the courage, finding himself smiling back shyly.

Time is a mountainous presence and he moves through it like a termite, tunneling dim passages beneath the cosmic skin of continuance, like a miner wandering his way through tunnels with faulty lamps. They prick the darkness as the flair of a match-strike.

She is walking towards him, her hips swaying as gently as the waves.

He is at a disadvantage, seated as he is. She towers over him, shaking her curling hair out of her eyes. But she seats herself next to him and reaches out to brush her fingertips across his knuckles gently, as though she doesn't quite expect him to be solid.

The contact sends sparks up his arm.

"I didn't believe it was you, at first," she says and smiles warmly.

All at once he knows her. The context blindsides him and he recoils. "Miss Granger?"

His voice cracks and he feels lightheaded.

She smiles blindingly and then frowned as he pulls away from her.

"I am sorry—I just saw you..." she trails off and takes a distracted drag from her cigarette. "And I had to say something. I thought you recognized me, too."

No, he hadn't, but now he feels like a simpleton because her lovely curling hair, though tamer now, can't be anyone else's. Her expressive mouth is just as he remembers it from her incessant chatter during to many potions classes to count.

"No one has seen you since you checked yourself out of St. Mungos," she continues quietly.

It has been so long since he has had to be biting and sarcastic that he feels like he has forgotten how. Instead he answers simply, "I didn't want to be seen."

She smiles again and sips her wine. "Is it alright if I stay?" She motioned to his table.

He shrugs and tugs his book closer but doesn't read it.

She offers a silver cigarette case to him. "Smoke?"

He doesn't smoke but he takes one anyway. When she leans forward to flick her silver lighter, he catches the scent of her perfume, a delicate but spicy amber scent. It matches her lovely hazel eyes somehow.

"I'll get a bottle of wine," she says, but it's a question.

He takes a long drag, a deep breath at the same time, and inclines his head.

She grins brightly and leaves the smoking things on the table as she returns to the bar.

When she returns, she brings a French burgundy and two bulbous glasses.

"You seem older," he muses. Has it really only been two years?

She lights another cigarette as a delicate flush winds around her neck. "Time-turner."

He nods once and busies himself by peeling back the foil on the bottle and easing out the cork.

There is a long pause as they drink and re-center.

"So…" she begins, but then stops.

He knows what she wants to ask: for an accounting of him and what he has done and how he survived, his motives and desires and all of the thousand little 'whys' and 'wherefores'. He can see the questions swirling in her eyes just as thickly as when she was a student.

He is surprised that he has a response for her unasked questions.

"My past… even so recently as March… consists of a great graveyard of monuments crumbling among the wonder-less backdrops of my horrible choices. I can't recount the last forty-years any more than you could pack all of your belongings into a single suitcase."

He is still surprised when she nodded knowingly.

"I'm surprised to have found you but so, so happy that you seem to be…" She starts earnestly but trails off as she recollects just whom she is speaking to. "I'm sorry Professor—I tend towards the romantic side of things."

"_Really,_ Miss Granger? I had no idea." But he is amused and teasing. Conversation is coming easier now. He is surprised at this but unwilling to pursue that dangerous line of thinking. "Tell me about what has been happening, then?"

Her words are universes of lights, the ribbons of the aurora borealis, undiluted by the stars or the coming of the dawn. Her words are waterfalls, earthquakes, unexplored oceans, yellowed maps that lead to the lost becoming found.

He is fascinated.

At first she speaks of people they know—their careers and aspirations and the little families that are springing up. But soon they are winding through Alchemy theory and Hermione is sparkling.

When night has fallen and she gathers herself and her empty cigarette case up, he is surprised to feel disappointed.

"Would it be alright—I mean—may I come back to see you?" she asks quietly.

He only shrugs and then she is gone.

* * *

_This is a story of growth, change and a narrative of "newness" or "firsts"._

_Edited on September 11th, 2014 by renaid who corrals my wandering tenses.  
_


	2. Cancer — Leo — Virgo

**.**

**Part**

**[ II ]**

* * *

_was it the moon that called you like a tide?_

_to lap on the shores of danger_

_to lose yourself in the currents _

_that took you far_

_from the safe_

_well mapped, marked and trekked water_

_out to sea_

_until your feet_

_left the sandy-safe bottom _

_for the last time_

_riding the swell of a final wave_

_and you found yourself_

_born away_

_upon the_

_moon-cycle_

* * *

**Cancer**

**[June 22- July 21]**

**Moon**

* * *

There are shells at the vender, unique whelk and conch. He trails his fingers over the pearly sweep and around the outer architecture as though the ridges and valleys hid Braille in their surfaces. The shop owner assures him that the perfect shells came from exotic oceans: the Maldives, the South China Sea, or Tahiti—as though there could be somewhere more foreign and mysterious than a port in Morocco.

He buys a perfect conch anyway, its fluid shape worn smooth by tidal revision and its inner chamber bare like the abandoned interior of an old Scottish castle, gutted by a war that should never have touched it.

He is becoming a materialist, he muses. A collector and his flat a collective, filled with oddities and treasures.

There is a chai cafe around the corner and he brings his new shell with him and lays it, as a centerpiece, on the cafe table.

Hermione is coming back for another conference in a few days. She has arranged to meet him already, and he is mildly surprised to find that he is looking forward to her visit.

The chai is spicy and thick with anise and cardamom. He closes his eyes and sips deeply, and when he opens them, Hermione is sitting across from him with a soft look on her face.

He blinks, but she doesn't disappear.

"I've come a few days early; I hope you don't mind," she says softly.

He shakes his head. "No one else has come," he says quietly.

She reads the question between his softly stated words. "I haven't told anyone I found you."

He has no choice but to accept her statement and pour her a cup of chai.

"So what is in your future here in Nador?"

The future does not exist in his mind. It is a wish or a dream. He considers it resembling spider web after the rain, ringed in droplets that sparkle like diamonds.

"And your past?" she presses.

The past does not exist, he flatly assures her. It is a mythos, a ruined temple whose grandeur has been stripped from it, or an ancient, sacred meadow ringed in mystery and dark stones.

She nods and gives him a satisfied smile. "We live in the house of the now."

He sips his tea and caresses the curve of her cheek with his eyes.

When she stands and loops her small leather bag over her shoulder, he realizes she has just arrived. And when he presses, he discovers that she hasn't made any reservations for lodging yet.

That's how she ends up standing in his living room, the moonlight caressing her collarbones as though the night itself was making love to her.

He is self-conscious of the clutter—wishing he had gotten some shelves or crates for the books, but Hermione is already on the balcony. She looks at home between the clay pots full of herbs, and when she sits next to the little lemon tree and pats the spot beside her, he cannot help but obey.

They talk late into the night.

He is greedy: storing up her looks and words, her tones and postures. They are indelibly incised on his skin, collected and coveted, like invisible tattooed promises that he hopes she will recognize when there is nothing left to write. He is an open book, if she would care to look, and she will read him left to right. She has marked him without ever touching him.

He wakes first and watches her sleeping in the nest of blankets he made for her in the balcony air.

He feels as though he has woken, holding moons in his palms and stardust on his lips. He washes away the taste with little cups of thick, black coffee.

Hermione wakes to the smell and follows her nose—hair a wild nest and eyes sleep-filled and soft.

He supposes that there is a balance to being human—the sun still rises and sets over the earth's deep rhythms that are both disastrous and beautiful.

They share coffee and he leaves for mass without telling her where he is going. Because he is a coward. Because he doesn't know how to be open.

She is still there when he gets back, watching him without judgment.

* * *

**Leo**

**[July 22 - August 22]**

**Sun**

* * *

July wanes into the heat of August. It seems that the world originates on the shores of Morocco, the continents flowing outward from his feet in every direction, covering the earth with a shield of scarred rock sheathed in loam and dirt and crowned with the grasses, sands, and forests.

He has learned mass and he is already kneeling with the congregation.

Have I passed though your fire, O Lord, and survived? Am I but a slender reed in your wind, O Lord?

He leaves during the homily, silently slipping out into the courtyard and breathing the deep air of the evening.

He breathes through the pain now—some days it seems to echo through his ribs and lodge right below his scarred voice box. Some days he doesn't think of it at all. Those days are beacons of celebration.

She finds him about to go to lunch and joins him at his table without so much as a by-you-leave.

"Another conference?" he asks, disbelieving.

She shakes her head and it might be his imagination, but he fancies she looks a little embarrassed.

"Holiday, actually. I might wander over to Italy in a week or two."

But she doesn't, and they have three weeks of companionship before she heads back to England.

She means to get a hotel room, but somehow he is able to convince her to camp among his plants out on his balcony.

During the day they go—sometime together, sometimes apart.

He still goes to mass every day. O Lord, do you bind up the broken?

But at night they drink wine and talk in the protective warm darkness of Morroco's summer.

He adores the way secrets feel in the darkness: the slip of silk being peeled back layer by layer.

"We all have secrets, Severus; I wear a mask, too," Hermione says softly. "We all have stories to tell and we all want to feel like someone wants us—needs us."

"I've been waiting for someone to come looking, but I suppose my armor has always been too thick," he admits.

She smiles softly at him over the table. "I always wondered, but I've never been in much of a position to do anything about it."

He simply stares and wonders how many suspected there was something behind his wool and snark.

She has left fingerprints on the shattered glass of his heart.

They walk the bazaar, and he shows her the best places to get spices to take back to England with her—the expensive saffron threads, spicy chili, tawny cinnamon, ground cumin, and sweet coriander.

There are gardens to visit and beaches to sit on; summer is a series of delicious meals, Spanish mass, bottles of wine and long walks.

* * *

**Virgo**

**[August 23 - September 23]**

**Mercury**

* * *

It's September before he sees her again.

He came into this relationship defenseless—he wonders if she knows it.

He came to Morocco for himself, but she has woven herself into its fabric.

"I dreamt we were redwoods; you know of them, I'm sure." He doesn't even say hello.

She sits down and he signals the waiter for another cup for his chai.

"In America?" She smiles and picks up the thread of conversation effortlessly.

"The very ones—We were majestic and towering and there were little cities carved inside of us, like termites tunnel through—but real cities. I had Nador and Casablanca and Rabat and you had London and Hogsmead and Exeter. The bark protected them, and us."

"I don't know quite what to say."

"Then don't. That you are here, physically here in the space I inhabit, that you are breathing the same air and hearing the same sounds—that is enough. Even when we can't talk, we can feel. You are here. You care, at least a little. What more could I ask for?"

"I _do_ care Severus—I do."

He would shed his skin and with it, his past, strip himself to his very bones if it would help her care a little bit more. He will not say love—he dares not.

When she leaves again (it was a strangely brief trip), he doesn't ask if she is coming back. He suspects that he is digging his own grave under unspoken promises and strange nighttime intimacies.

Hope is always the heaviest burden he bears on bowed shoulders. It weighs him down and seeps through the ever-widening gaps between his armor plates. But it also, terrifyingly, gives him wings.

* * *

_Edited on April 8th, 2015 by renaid who __ sighs a deep, contented sigh (even if she was rightly skeptical when reading the first chapter)._


	3. Libra — Scorpio — Sagittarius

**.**

**Part**

**[ III ]**

* * *

_but when you wake _

_will you be on a familiar shore_

_or some place foreign_

_an exotic in-between_

_will you break against a coral _

_reef of grief_

_or stand on a wide sandy_

_beach of new_

_beginnings_

* * *

**Libra**

**[September 24 - October 23]**

**Venus**

* * *

_Other people are not medicine_. He repeats this to himself often. But he can't help himself, it seems, in dreaming of Hermione—waking and sleeping. He suspects he is driftwood to her ocean, content to be tossed by her waves and bask in the privilege of being in her shadow at all.

_Other people are not homes. _Perhaps they are more like rented hotels for holidays. He has always had trouble letting go—he has had so little in his life. He knows he doesn't leave even when the time to check out is passed.

She's started sending him letters. The first is so unexpected; it comes through Muggle mail, postmarked Royal Mail London. He nearly tells the postman to take it back—it's a mistake—but the sight of his name 'Severus Al-Amir', the Arabic translation of 'Prince' he has chosen, written in her familiar hand, stops him in his tracks.

For a long moment he is not sure that he remembers how to breathe.

It's the first of a regular correspondence.

He reads and rereads—trying to see between the lines. He hardly knows what he wishes to find. Double negatives? Hidden confessions?

_—I want you to know how thankful I am that you've allowed me to keep seeing you. You are a hallelujah. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Wherever you go, may people always recognize that you have a beautiful heart.—_

Her benediction is beautiful, but it burns him because he can't conceive of anyone seeing anything beautiful in him. No one ever has.

_—Our goodbyes are so hard.—_

The echoes of them break his heart and nest in its ruins.

_—I think we are journeying together towards the same horizon.—_

And that is the best expression of friendship that Severus can remember hearing.

* * *

**Scorpio**

**[October 24 - November 22]**

**Pluto**

* * *

October thirty-first.

Hallowe'en is not a traditional event in Morocco—at least not as he knows it. But there are echoes of it in the French and American schools. Masks are sold. Somewhere he is sure there is a party.

For him there are only memories.

That anniversary that is more difficult than all the others—awful though they too may be.

He lays _her_ to rest slowly, as though a great weight has been sliding off of his shoulders and down his arms to rest in its long prepared grave.

He never loved her—not truly—not as she deserved to be loved.

He loved the idea of her, the concept of her person keeping his demons at bay, the sound of her laugh, the theory of her being his achievement: his trophy or victory that others could envy.

He loved her for his own sake.

He never loved her because he couldn't allow her to evolve beyond the vision he had painted for himself.

He loved the ashes of his dreams, his ghosts, and his pain. But he never loved her.

And she had deserved more from their childhood friendship than what he offered.

He came into their relationship defenseless and she had known. He had waged war, not understanding that its fate was already designed. He had lost everything but there had been no victor.

Lily had born butterflies that had obscured the flaws —in him, in her— but they had dissolved leaving a sick wake.

October thirty-first: the night his world ended. May second: the night his physical life winked out like the line of a heart monitor and then charged back as though a defibrillator had caught his chest unawares. And today, November twenty-second: the day that Hermione is returning.

She is fantastic and wild. She is more human to him than anyone has ever been. She is the earth, brimming with secret potion alchemy and he is alive with her magic.

He opens the door.

"Severus." She is smiling, wide and bright.

And then he has an armful of witch.

It's much later with their familiar wine and the scent of the sea in the darkness that she asks, "How have you been?"

And in the darkness of that November night he finds himself confessing the whole horrible last month of grief.

He is horrified when he cries. And yet, he is relieved when he weeps.

He cannot remember the last time he was held as he wept—not to be held together against his own brokenness but to be held against someone's wholeness. His loneliness falls asleep against her warmth.

He can hear her heartbeat where his head rests against her chest and he knows that it's in that second he has fallen terribly in love.

He likes to imagine that if he learned how to have courage he could finally be happy. Happy—an insipid word for a soul-deep home-peace, a place to rest a hopeful heart and world-weary bones, where someone might be pleased to see him and he could leave his darkness outside.

* * *

**Sagittarius**

**[November 23 - December 21]**

**Jupiter**

* * *

And somehow he has agreed to come back to England for Christmas and Yule.

He agrees because she asked between chaste kisses, and somehow the universe is within her mouth. When she presses her lips to his, some of the space spills from her and tumbles into his mouth, filling him with stars and nebula, and planets, and suns.

The expanse of her fills his emptiness and her star-tipped lips incandesce his soul. And so he agrees to everything she asks. No matter the storm that dances along his tides, the moon of her will rise above his wreckage and hold him to orbit.

"I miss the peace of the sea when I go back to England," Hermione murmurs. "Perhaps I am made from its salt."

_Stay with me._ But he cannot say it. _Love me as much as you love the sea._ But it would be unthinkable to punish her for her offer of friendship by attempting to twist it into something she can't possibly want. _Love me slowly or not at all. _

"But you will bring a little bit of that salt with you when you come." She smiles and leans forward to nuzzle her nose against his cheek.

_I've found you but I'm certain that you have not found me._

The rest of the month is a long wait.

* * *

_Edited on April 13th by renaid who can feel the tidal pull. _


	4. Capricorn — Aquarius — Pisces

**.**

**Part**

**[ IV ]**

* * *

_the world may rush over you_

_you will be carbon and charcoal _

_and maybe one day the space _

_between your atoms _

_condensed_

_a diamond_

_but until then _

_let your story _

_unravel around you_

_seize its threads _

_go further _

_and deeper_

* * *

**Capricorn**

**[December 22 - January 20]**

**Saturn**

* * *

He has forgotten what England felt like (ominous), what it smelled like (crisp snow warring with air pollution) and what it was like to exist there (years of poverty and self-denial). He is a different person in London—deeper but sadder, melancholy, and his skin is tighter and less comfortable. It is a strange sense of reliving that he finds in the shadows of his former life and past experiences.

He knocks softly at number 6.

There is a pause, just long enough to start a low thrum of panic in his chest before the door is opened to the warm interior and Hermione is smiling up at him for a moment before embracing him in a tight hug. He lowers his head to rest his cheek on her riotous hair.

There is nowhere he would rather be. Perhaps, if it were possible, he would step outside time. Would there be space for human consciousness there? Would _he_ be just the same? But he has no time to wax philosophical because Hermione is moving again, tugging him effortlessly into her orbit.

"Come in, come in—" She pulls him into the little flat, warm and bright.

He abandons England's Severus at the doorway and returns to Morocco's Severus with the press of a wineglass in his hand.

"I'm so glad you are here, that you came." She entwined their hands and snuggled up under his arm. "It's just us for a few days; I hope that's alright."

He can only smile. The trees outside were bare and laden with a cozy wrap of snow, but inside the room was littered with reminders and metaphors of their shared existence: a shell he had given her—title revision, a scarf hung like a tapestry—knitting togetherness, a set of glittering crystal and gold chai cups—community in the shared table.

And of course, in the corner, a Christmas tree, covered in fairy lights and what appear to be homemade paper star ornaments.

He draws closer and realizes, with a jolt, they are her old potions essays, traced over with his vicious red ink.

He is shocked and perhaps a little hurt. Is this a cruel joke? Once he might have been able to turn it around and use it, instead, as a weapon—but he cannot now, not here, not with Hermione.

But when he meets her eyes, she is smiling widely.

"I wanted a bit of both of us and this was all I had of you, besides your precious letters, that could be made into decorations."

He cannot speak.

She continues, softer now, "I thought it was time to let go of _that_ part of our history." And after another pause, "I can take them away—are you upset?"

He discards his wine glass as he crosses the room in two long steps to embrace her: a former student (but the pain of that time is dulling at last), his smoking partner (though they have exchanged the cigarettes of their first meeting for a delicate vase-like hooka), a balcony sitter (the darkness seducing secrets out of each of them by turn), and an amorous future partner (at least that's how it feels when she tilts her head back and catches his mouth with hers).

And gone are the closed-mouth kisses that sought an eyebrow, a temple, a cheekbone, or a forehead. In their place is a long tangling of lips and tongue, the taste of wine and chocolate and _Hermione._

When they end the kiss he is panting and feels near tears.

"Love me slowly," said a hoarse voice, and he is surprised to realize that it is his.

She pulls back from where her lips had been exploring his neck. "Shall I stop?"

He does not reply and she pulls back further to look in his eyes.

He closes them and turns his face away, ready to angle his body away and then, perhaps, to retreat.

"Severus?" Her voice takes a strident, fearful edge. "My love doesn't have limits—it doesn't run out like an hourglass or a bottle of wine."

And then it is just the sound of his ragged breathing; staccato punctuation. He hardly needs to explain, nor can he imagine trying to put words to the past, memories that had once been bottled up inside of him, slowly and quietly killing every scrap of grace and goodness in his soul.

"Do you remember when we talked of the future—our dreams?" she asks.

He nods because he does, though that café table and their second meeting are long past.

"Well this is the future—and you are here, and I am here, just as we promised."

And there is nothing more to be said.

* * *

**Aquarius**

**[January 21 - February 19]**

**Uranus**

* * *

He stays in England until late January.

He cannot tear himself away from her—not since the universe expanded at the touch of her lips.

She is the sort of woman who is like the moon that, despite the sun, can still rise behind the daylight clouds and be seen.

If someone asked how it was to be in love he could not have articulated how _she_ is embedded in his skin. It is wild, like the brambles that overrun gardens. It is perplexing, like an old cardboard puzzle that you may or may not have all the pieces too.

But it is better than anything else.

His story has turned outward, rather than revolving only around himself and his insular guilt and grief.

He meets Potter again. 'Harry,' he tries to say. The boy has stood in for two separate, yet entwined agonies: Harry's green eyes, in them the woman who had been his first and best friend as well as his first love, and his dark hair and face, his father, Severus's teenaged tormentor. But, to Severus, he has never been able to be just Harry Potter, a boy.

Severus is amazed and humbled by his willingness to forgive.

There are new narratives to be written in other languages: the language of forgiveness, of love, of justice. There are new plans, like city builders who lay out grids, and new plots and dramas (Harry is getting married to his own red-haired school sweetheart, you see) to explore.

He feels like he has been counting down to his body's failure for too long, waiting for his blood to still and congeal and his lungs to stiffen with their last breath. But now—but now.

A starling, feathers dark and just brushed with iridescent green, calls from its perch on a low wall. He looks up and feels as though it might have been only yesterday (though it was another January, long ago and far away) he was leaving London for anywhere.

Now he is sad to go.

He is certain that the future watches mortals and wonders at their inability to see _beyond_.

* * *

**Pisces**

**[February 20 - March 20]**

**Neptune**

* * *

He has scarcely had a chance to air out his apartment at home again in Morocco before there is a familiar knock at the door.

"Hermione?"

"Do you know there are spaces between atoms—there is loneliness there in the miniscule, rather like the spaces between trees in the forest or between galaxies and stars?" she asks, solemnly standing, hands folded, on his step.

He watches her for a long moment. "No, I suppose I didn't know that."

"I'll not be a pentameter mark on someone else's poem." And there is that brave fire in her he remembers vaguely from her youth, but it has burned and sharpened into something full bloomed and beautiful.

"You _are_ my poem."

And then she smiles, her lips curling invitingly under her freckled nose and sparking eyes.

"Careful, Severus Al-Amir Prince Snape—you may never be rid of me."

And he rolls his eyes (at least he hasn't forgotten how to do that) and hauls her up for a long kiss.

He will read the curves of her body like no man ever has before—following the draw of a map that they could not see or interpret. She is so beautiful it hurts, an ache that starts in his heart and spreads outward. It isn't the kind of pain that he hopes will go away but the kind he welcomes like an old friend.

He admires the freckles on her skin; they are akin to stargazing. He wants to make love to her—all of her.

In her arms there is ecstasy and it is not only physical—but in their intimate oneness, the perfect arousal.

She traces poetry over his chest, the heart that had been broken now a prism, refracting light into a rainbow of desire.

This May he will not be alone—and neither will she.

* * *

_Edited on April 22nd by renaid whose response was "wow". Interpret that how you will, gentle reader.  
_


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